There are eight players left in the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Eventand the players are on their first break of the night. The audience at home on ESPN2 is listening to Phil Hellmuth recap the two hours of pots so far.

The first casualty of the November Nine, and the only one so far, was Mark Newhouse(pictured), who was in a race pre-flop with 9-9 against Ryan Riess‘ A-K. Riess hit a king on the flop to pull ahead and, just like that, we had our first bust-out. Newhouse earned $733,000, while Riess inched closer to the Main Event chip lead. Newhouse had pushed for his final 10 big blinds.

One major hand that occurred recently saw Marc McLaughlinscoop a pot of 25 million with K-J on a board of 4-6-K-J-K after a runner-runner full house. He won courtesy of Amir Lehavot, who had A-K for trips. Lehavot checked on the river and McLaughlin bet 7.2 million after much deliberation. Lehavot instantly called and McLaughlin shot up to second on the Main Event leaderboard.

Reigning WSOP Main Event winner Greg Merson joined the broadcast booth around 9:30pm Eastern Time on ESPN2, providing a unique complement to Antonio Esfandiari. Norman Chad and Lon McEachern were also present, as usual. Merson was pretty insightful in the booth and received the following Tweet from Erick Lindgren: “If you are a poker fan, it is a real treat to get to listen to Antonio and Greg Merson call the final table right now on ESPN 2.”

Oh, and spoiler alert: Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (pictured, image courtesy PoliticallyIll1) left with a shoulder injury and will not return, so anyone watching the WSOP on ESPN2 was missing a battle between Luke McCown and Seneca Wallace over on ESPN.

Some viewers were growing impatient at the pace of the November Nine, including Jared TheWacoKiddHamby, who wrote on Twitter, “Watching good nits play poker is boring as fuck. Yearning for the days of #Yang or #Gold.” Mazin Khoury was also perturbed, Tweeting, “I gotta admit, I watched an old episode from High Stakes Poker S4 today with all those whales, was much more entertaining than this.” The first hour of play featured about 15 hands.

JC Tran held the chip lead at the time of writing at 41.5 million, while Riess was just 4 million behind in second place. Tran was going off at 9:5 at the Rio’s sports book just before play began.

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